now, in his stead?”
The shouts and screams of children could now be heard through the open door that faced the inner courtyard. Below, one of the division heads had started administering the bastinado to apprentices who’d most likely been caught with red ink powder in their pockets or gold leaf hidden away in a fold of paper; probably the two whom I’d seen trembling as they waited in the cold. Young painters, seizing an opportunity to mock them, ran to the door to watch.
“By the time the apprentices paint the ground of the Hippodrome here a rose color, finishing it off as our Master Osman has dictated,” said Nuri Effendi cautiously, “our brother Elegant Effendi, God willing, will have returned from wherever he’s gone and will complete the gilding on these two pages. Our master, Osman the Miniaturist, wanted Elegant Effendi to color the dirt floor of the Hippodrome differently in each scene. Rose pink, Indian green, saffron yellow or the color of goose shit. Whosoever beholds the picture will realize in the first rendering this is a dirt square and should be earth-colored, but in the second and third pictures, he’ll want other colors to keep himself amused. Embellishing ought to bring merriment to the page.”
I noticed some pictures on a sheet of paper that an assistant left in a corner. He was working on a single-leaf picture for a
Book of Victories
, the depiction of a naval fleet heading off to battle, but it was obvious that the screams of his friends whose soles were being severely beaten, provoked the illustrator to run off and watch. The fleet he made by repeatedly tracing identical ships with a block pattern didn’t even seem to float in the sea; yet, this artificiality, the lack of wind in the sails, had less to do with the block pattern than the young painter’s lack of skill. I saw with sorrow that the pattern had been cut violently out of an old book which I couldn’t identify, perhaps a collage album. Obviously, Master Osman was overlooking quite a lot.
When we came to his own worktable, Nuri Effendi proudly stated that he finished a gilded royal insignia for Our Sultan, which he’d been working on for three weeks. I respectfully admired Nuri Effendi’s gold inlay and the insignia, which had been made on an empty sheet to ensure that its recipient and the reason for its being sent would remain secret. I knew well enough that many impetuous pashas in the East had refrained from rebellion upon seeing the noble and potent splendor of the Sultan’s royal insignia.
Next, we saw the last masterpieces that Jemal the Calligrapher had transcribed, completed and left behind; but we passed over them hastily to avoid giving credence to opponents of color and decoration who maintained that true art consisted of calligraphy alone and that decorative illumination was simply a secondary means of adding emphasis.
Nasır the Limner was making a mess of a plate he intended to repair from a version of the
Quintet
of Nizami dating back to the era of Tamerlane’s sons; the picture depicted Hüsrev looking at a naked Shirin as she bathed.
A ninety-two-year-old former master who was half blind and had nothing to say besides claiming that sixty years ago he kissed Master Bizhad’s hand in Tabriz and that the great master of legend was blind and drunk at the time, showed us with trembling hands the ornamentation on the pen box he would present as a holiday gift to Our Sultan when it was completed three months hence.
Shortly a silence enveloped the whole workshop where close to eighty painters, students and apprentices worked in the small cells which constituted the lower floor. This was a postbeating silence, the likes of which I’d experienced many times; a silence which would be broken at times by a nerve-wracking chuckle or a witticism, at times by a few sobs or the suppressed moan of the beaten boy before his crying fit would remind the master miniaturists of the beatings they themselves received as
The shouts and screams of children could now be heard through the open door that faced the inner courtyard. Below, one of the division heads had started administering the bastinado to apprentices who’d most likely been caught with red ink powder in their pockets or gold leaf hidden away in a fold of paper; probably the two whom I’d seen trembling as they waited in the cold. Young painters, seizing an opportunity to mock them, ran to the door to watch.
“By the time the apprentices paint the ground of the Hippodrome here a rose color, finishing it off as our Master Osman has dictated,” said Nuri Effendi cautiously, “our brother Elegant Effendi, God willing, will have returned from wherever he’s gone and will complete the gilding on these two pages. Our master, Osman the Miniaturist, wanted Elegant Effendi to color the dirt floor of the Hippodrome differently in each scene. Rose pink, Indian green, saffron yellow or the color of goose shit. Whosoever beholds the picture will realize in the first rendering this is a dirt square and should be earth-colored, but in the second and third pictures, he’ll want other colors to keep himself amused. Embellishing ought to bring merriment to the page.”
I noticed some pictures on a sheet of paper that an assistant left in a corner. He was working on a single-leaf picture for a
Book of Victories
, the depiction of a naval fleet heading off to battle, but it was obvious that the screams of his friends whose soles were being severely beaten, provoked the illustrator to run off and watch. The fleet he made by repeatedly tracing identical ships with a block pattern didn’t even seem to float in the sea; yet, this artificiality, the lack of wind in the sails, had less to do with the block pattern than the young painter’s lack of skill. I saw with sorrow that the pattern had been cut violently out of an old book which I couldn’t identify, perhaps a collage album. Obviously, Master Osman was overlooking quite a lot.
When we came to his own worktable, Nuri Effendi proudly stated that he finished a gilded royal insignia for Our Sultan, which he’d been working on for three weeks. I respectfully admired Nuri Effendi’s gold inlay and the insignia, which had been made on an empty sheet to ensure that its recipient and the reason for its being sent would remain secret. I knew well enough that many impetuous pashas in the East had refrained from rebellion upon seeing the noble and potent splendor of the Sultan’s royal insignia.
Next, we saw the last masterpieces that Jemal the Calligrapher had transcribed, completed and left behind; but we passed over them hastily to avoid giving credence to opponents of color and decoration who maintained that true art consisted of calligraphy alone and that decorative illumination was simply a secondary means of adding emphasis.
Nasır the Limner was making a mess of a plate he intended to repair from a version of the
Quintet
of Nizami dating back to the era of Tamerlane’s sons; the picture depicted Hüsrev looking at a naked Shirin as she bathed.
A ninety-two-year-old former master who was half blind and had nothing to say besides claiming that sixty years ago he kissed Master Bizhad’s hand in Tabriz and that the great master of legend was blind and drunk at the time, showed us with trembling hands the ornamentation on the pen box he would present as a holiday gift to Our Sultan when it was completed three months hence.
Shortly a silence enveloped the whole workshop where close to eighty painters, students and apprentices worked in the small cells which constituted the lower floor. This was a postbeating silence, the likes of which I’d experienced many times; a silence which would be broken at times by a nerve-wracking chuckle or a witticism, at times by a few sobs or the suppressed moan of the beaten boy before his crying fit would remind the master miniaturists of the beatings they themselves received as
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